One U.S. official killed as gunmen storm, burn U.S. consulate in Benghazi

posted at 8:41 pm on September 11, 2012 by Allahpundit

The attack was still ongoing as of 7:15 p.m. ET but there’s already a body count. Time for another, more forceful statement of regret about “hurt feelings” from the local embassy?

“We can confirm that our office in Benghazi, Libya has been attacked by a group of militants. We are working with the Libyans now to secure the compound,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in State late Tuesday afternoon. “We condemn in strongest terms this attack on our diplomatic mission.”…

Earlier Tuesday, as the attack on the Cairo embassy was ongoing, Nuland told reporters at the daily briefing that the Cairo protests were “modest” compared to what State has seen in the past.

“It sounds like — and I don’t have full details — that this came up pretty quickly, relatively modest group of people, but caught probably us and the Egyptian security outside the embassy by some surprise,” she said. “I would urge you not to draw too many conclusions because we’ve also had some very positive developments in our relationship with Egypt.”

Among the very positive developments lately: Egypt’s new Islamist president paying a goodwill visit to a country with whom we might be at war a month from now. Nuland won’t say whether the attack in Libya is related to the storming of the compound in Cairo, but a spokesman for the Libyan government says it is. Can’t wait to find out which clerics and/or Islamist politicians are quietly pushing the Mohammed movie on their followers to get them excited. According to the filmmaker, he’s surprised by the reaction — although, by his own account, he shouldn’t have been:

Sam Bacile, an American citizen who said he produced, directed and wrote the two-hour film said he had not anticipated such a furious reaction…

“The main problem is I am the first one to put on the screen someone who is (portraying) Muhammad. It makes them mad,” he said in an interview in a telephone number in California. “But we have to open the door. After 9/11 everybody should be in front of the judge, even Jesus, even Muhammad.”

He said many of the film’s cast quit half way through the production, which he started “three or four” years ago, because they were afraid of Muslims.

He said the film also addresses the persecution of Copts in Egypt and blames the U.S. and its allies for fighting Muslims. “The U.S. should fight the ideology, not the people.”

If we “fight the ideology” the way this guy’s decided to fight it, embassies will be burning all over the Middle East. That’s why the Cairo embassy groveled as it did: The irony of these fulsome diplomatic statements of respect for Islam every time the more excitable elements of Islamist movements fly into a rage is that they’re not based on respect at all. They’re a rhetorical ransom, paid to keep the body count down. If not for the threat of violence, the embassy could have, and maybe would have, simply said something like, “The U.S. government had nothing to do with the film in question. American citizens have the right to freedom of speech. Hopefully Egyptians will someday too.” But they can’t say that, because that sort of neutrality could be used as a further pretext to kill. So they sold out American principles in the interest of saving some lives. Pitiful, but maybe not quite as pitiful to the guy whose life was saved. Whatever else this is, though, it’s assuredly not respect.

Blowback

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The administration talks nice to the people who storm and burn our embassies and kill our staffers but the One won’t talk to Bibi at all. What more do Americans of the Jewish faith need to know. After his reelection, what would Obama do if Israelis attacked and burned our embassy for leaning on Israel not to preempt an Iranian nuclear strike?

And the number of mosques in this country continues to grow at an almost exponential rate. We will be fighting an enemy from within. Our government has allowed it to happen–both parties for years now. And we will pay the price in the streets. Gird, people, gird.

predator on September 11, 2012 at 9:10 PM

Our feckless leaders have no sense of responsibility. Sure would have been nice after 9-11 if we had cut back on immigration from Muslim countries.

Demonstrators attacked a U.S. consulate in Libya and breached the walls of the American Embassy in Cairo,

mounting angry protests over a film by a U.S. producer
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that portrays the Prophet Muhammad as a womanizer, pedophile and fraud.
******

The movie, “Innocence of Muslims,” was directed and produced by an Israeli-American real-estate developer
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who characterized it as a political effort to call attention to the hypocrisies of Islam. It has been promoted by Terry Jones, the Florida pastor whose burning of Qurans previously sparked deadly riots around the world.

In Benghazi, Libya, several dozen gunmen from an Islamist group, Ansar al Sharia, attacked the consulate with rocket-propelled grenades to protest the film, a deputy interior minister for the Benghazi region told the Al-Jazeera network. A government brigade evacuated the consulate, after which militants set it on fire, said the minister, Wanees Sharef.

One American died in the attack, the State Department was informed by Libya, CNN reported.

To the east, in Cairo, a crowd of some 2,000 people gathered at the Embassy to protest the video. Some of them climbed the embassy walls late Tuesday, pulling down and burning an American flag.
(More…..)
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It’s time to dump the ME with the exception of Israel and put our full efforts into utilizing our vast energy resources. Yes, the ME will still be exporting oil, but we can cut them off, pull our corporations back to the US with incentives and tell the muzzies to FO.

We don’t need them. They need us. Europe can grovel if they want to.

We’ve spent too much time trying to enforce sanctions on Iran only to be undermined every step along the way. We saw it with Iraq.

Being held hostage to medieval savages as we have been for decades is ridiculous.

Drill here. Drill now. If they don’t like it, they know what to expect.

I was too young to remember the Iran hostage crisis. If it was anything like this – no wonder people shifted to Reagan.

Incompetent – just totally incompetent

gophergirl on September 11, 2012 at 8:48 PM

I remember the Iran hostage crisis.

One difference between then and now is that then, the network news channels actually led with the story — every day. It wasn’t 3 or 4 stories in, after a profile of one of the Kardashians or a feel-good story about the chick recovering from the flesh-eating bacteria, as we saw from the alphabets today.

It was not just an attack on an American embassy, it was an attack on sovereign American soil. They might as well have attacked a VFW post in St. Louis. Of course if they had the body count would have been one American and several dozen Libyans.

THAT is WHY he MADE SURE that the Caption to the Entry into this Post read “Winning”

No – it’s NOT because it’s “snarky” or “back-handed”….it’s because his SKIN has practically been CRAWLING with THE NEED to Pound his fist in the air – OPENLY CHEER for Obama to WIN!!

THAT’s WHY he tries to make Every Post about this Election – a Post about mmmmmBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!!! See earlier “posts” from him. HE constantly DROPS Bush into the conversation at EVERY turn. He WANTS every conversation about this election to START with George W. BOOOOOOSH!!! Why? BECAUSE he HAAATES mmmBOOOOOOOSH!!

WHAT is this Election About: It’s About THE ECONOMY, STUPID!!! And It’s About the Loss of JOBS, STUPID!!!

UNLESS you’re Allahpundit – then it’s about mmBOOOOOOSH….AGAIN!!

One of the WORST people alive – who is secretly CHEERING for the terrorists………

Nobody is going to say anything about the idiot Goldberg and his comments? According to him America should be apologizing to Muslims before they attack our embassies. This is the brain trust at National Review, it’s pathetic.

I turned 9 in late ’79-so I remember parts of it, like the blindfolded hostages being led through the streets of Tehran. I also remember that my parents laid the fact that there WERE hostages @ the feet of the Carter administration.

And claims we have done so in the past. What a tool. Does he not realize that as far as that crowd was concerned, they were attacking Christians? And that we’d have to issue daily statements of condemnation if we were to actually respond to such attacks?

TexasDan on September 11, 2012 at 9:06 PM

Yep. What the hell is Williams talking about? Muslims are doing that every freaking day! It’s one of the cornerstones of Islam. There’s a Christian genocide underway. They’re slaughering the Copts, Iraqi Christians have dwindled and are under attack, Nigeria, Somalia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Afghanistan, etc, all over the world where there are Muslims this is happening. And we’re not doing a damn thing! That makes us complicit. And no one called him out on that.

Btw, I spent a large portion of the Iranian Hostage Crisis on deployment in the Med onboard the U.S.S. Forrestal. Our deployment that started in late November 1979 (about 3 weeks after the crisis began) had been scheduled for months but the developments in Iran gave it a sense of urgency. We ended up patrolling the Med for several months as the only carrier on station because the Nimitz got pulled away to get prepared for the failed rescue attempt.

We need to start supporting our embassies with Predators: the original version, for large crowds, and a different one, with a 40mm grenade launcher and 2 x .30cal MGs (a mini-AH1).
.
The man-dress wearers understand Predators, in a very similar way to dogs understanding 12ga. shotguns (and rifles and handguns): they run away, screaming.
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I think two embassy “incidents” might be enough to resolve the situation.

Romney better be all over this tomorrow and beyond. If not, he deserves to lose.

Mark1971 on September 11, 2012 at 9:19 PM

I’d think he’s allowing a BIT of time for Zero to step up, steaming out of his ears, but trying to give the Douche enough time to either man-up, or prove the ass he really is.
Mitt’s no slouch, and I can’t blame him for waiting for Zero or Hill to hang themselves, first.

Well no, my point was that the Neutron bomb killed everything with gamma/neutron radiation (err..as well as the standard blast and heat) as opposed to hydrogen bombs that killed everything with the blast and the residual radiation…

Go with Neutron…couple of years…go in, plow the skeletons into the ground…

Lighting up the people conducting the assault on the consulate will result in the death of Americans. Better to have Libyans stop the assault. Inform whomever is holds the most power that we will be destroying the oil termini along the coast in 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4 …

The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others
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Jonah Goldberg had it right. Under international agreements, consulates are treated as the sovreign soil of the consulate’s country. That is, attacking an embassy and killing US citizens IS A DECLARATION OF WAR. We should treat it as such and stop with the namby pamby apologies. The middle east sees this as us taking in a knee – which is encouragement for more attacks. This crap has to be met with a forceful response (yes, FORCE).

Anybody else think it’s past time for Arc Light? A little hard rain might take care of some of this absolute b.s.

Oh, shoot, that’s right… we have a president who cares more about the correct angle of his bow to foreign potentates, than the sanctity of US territory and the safety of its citizens.

Bombs, Stone Age, eradicate, sanitize, sea of effin’ glass… you libs and Islamist apologists can stuff your abhorrence of necessary solutions to this plague. I’m tired of this multiculture, brotherhood of humanity, religion of peace, kiss-their-a**es-so-they-like-us attitude. If we’re too scared to defend our way of life because we’re afraid of getting hurt in the process, we might as well hand over the flag and declare sharia right now.

Debates seldom matter. Never unless someone is just horrible. That will not be the case. Obama and Romney will both stick to talking points they will most likely be quite boring. Now Ryan will most likely have a good debate but seriously the VP Debate will not matter. Sarah destroyed Biden it made no difference.

Eerie shades of the Carter years….
For a very selfish reason I am praying every day that Romney will win this election. My youngest son is set for deployment to Afghanistan in the early spring. I pray he will have a new COC. Our enemies are emboldened by our current weak leader. Very scary times.

The first msm report I heard was “al qaeda flag”. About an hour later it had become “Jihadist flag”. About an hour after that it had become “black flag with Islamic writing”. I don’t think the media was confused so much as it was having a political/diplomatic problem with the administration over that flag.

Where is the President? It is the anniversary of 9/11…two of our embassies are being attacked…and American may have been killed…

Where is he indeed.

IrishEi on September 11, 2012 at 9:37 PM

Like I said, tell barack to think of them as peaceful American citizens protesting spending and debt. All of a sudden, the lightbulb will go on over his head, and he’ll say, “Ohhhh…these guys are terrorists! I hate them!!!!”